Besides these already mentioned, there was another person, who sat so

often at the Doctor's board and spent so many hours beneath his roof,

that, for the nonce, I shall reckon her among his family. Indeed,

Laura Stebbins was almost as much at home in the Bugbee mansion as at

the parsonage, and she used to regard the Doctor and his wife with an

affection quite filial in kind and very ardent in degree. For this she

had abundant reason, the good couple always treating her with the

utmost kindness, frequently making her presents of clothes and things

which she needed, besides gifts of less use and value. These tokens of

her friends' good-will she used to receive with many sprightly

demonstrations of thankfulness; sometimes, in her transports of

gratitude, distributing between the Doctor and his wife a number of

delicious kisses, and telling the latter that her husband was the best

and most generous of men. After Mrs. Bugbee's death, the Doctor's

manner, as was to be expected, became more grave and sober, and he

very wisely thought proper to treat Laura with a kindness less

familiar than before, which perceiving with the quickness of her sex,

she also practised a like reserve. But notwithstanding this prudent

change in his demeanor, his good-will for Laura was in no wise

abated. At all events, the friendship between Cornelia and Laura

suffered no decay or diminution. Indeed, it increased in fervency and

strength. For Laura, having finished her course of study at the

Belfield Academy, had now more time to devote to Cornelia than when

she had had lessons to get and recitations to attend. The parsonage

stood next to the Bugbee mansion, and in the paling between the two

gardens there was a wicket, through which Cornelia, Laura, and Helen

used to run to and fro a dozen times a day. The females of the

Doctor's family made nothing of scudding, bareheaded, across to the

parsonage by this convenient back-way, and bolting into the kitchen

without so much as knocking at the door; and Laura's habits at the

Bugbee mansion were still more familiar. Mrs. Jaynes, though not the

most affable of womankind, gave this close intimacy much favor and

encouragement; for she bore in mind that Cornelia's father was the

richest and most influential member of her husband's church and

parish.

At first, Laura was a little shy of the plain-spoken old maid, for

whose person, manners, and opinions she had often heard Mrs. Jaynes

express, in private, a most bitter dislike. But Statira had been

regnant in the Bugbee mansion less than a week, when Laura began to

make timid advances towards a mutual good understanding, of which for

a while Statira affected to take no heed; for having formed a

resolution to maintain a strict reserve towards every inmate of the

parsonage, she was not disposed to break it so soon, even in favor of

Laura, whose winsome overtures she found it difficult to resist.

"If it wa'n't for her bein' Miss Jaynes's sister," said she, one day,

to Cornelia, who had been praising her friend,--"if it wa'n't for that

one thing, I should like her remarkable well,--a good deal more'n

common."

"Pray, what have you got such a spite against the Jayneses for?" asked

Cornelia.

"What do you mean by askin' such a question as that, Cornele?" said

Tira, in a tone of stern reproof. "Who's got a spite against 'em? Not

I, by a good deal! As for the parson himself, he's a well-meanin' man,

and does as near right as he knows how. If you could say as much as

that for everybody, there wouldn't be any need of parsons any more."

"But you don't like Mrs. Jaynes," persisted Cornelia.

"I ha'n't got a spite against her, Cornele,--though, I confess, I

don't love the woman," replied Statira. "But I always treat her well;

though, to be sure, I don't curchy so low and keep smilin' so much as

most folks do, when they meet a minister's wife and have talk with

her. Even when she comes here a-borrowin' things she knows will be

giv' to her when she asks for 'em, which makes it so near to beggin'

that she ought to be ashamed on't, which I only give to her because

it's your father's wish for me to do so, and the things are his'n; but

I always treat her well, Cornele."

"But why don't you like her, Tira?" asked Helen.

"My dear, I'll tell you," said Statira; "for I don't want you to think

I'm set against any person unreasonable and without cause. You see

Miss Jaynes is a nateral-born beggar. I don't say it with any

ill-will, but it's a fact. She takes to beggin' as naterally as a

goslin' takes to a puddle; and when she first come to town she

commenced a-beggin', and has kep' it up ever since. She used to tackle

me the same as she does everybody else, askin' me to give somethin' to

this, and to that, and to t'other pet humbug of her'n, but I never

would do it; and when she found she could'nt worry me into it, like

the rest of 'em, it set her very bitter against me; and I heard of her

tellin' I'd treated her with rudeness, which I'd always treated her

civilly, only when I said 'No,' she found coaxin' and palaverin'

wouldn't stir me. So it went on for a year or two, till, one fall, I

was stayin' here to your ma's,--Cornele, I guess you remember the

time,--helpin' of her make up her quinces and apples. We was jest in

the midst of bilin' cider, with one biler on the stove and the biggest

brass kittle full in the fireplace, when in comes boltin' Miss Jaynes,

dressed up as fine as a fiddle. She set right down in the kitchen, and

your ma rolled her sleeves down and took off her apurn, lookin' kind

o' het and worried. After a few words, Miss Jaynes took a paper out

of her pocket, and says she to your ma, 'Miss Bugbee,' says she, 'I'm

a just startin' forth on the Lord's business, and I come to you as the

helpmate and pardner of one of his richest stewards in this

vineyard.'--'What is it now?' says your ma, lookin' out of one eye at

the brass kittle, and speakin' more impatient than I ever heard her

speak to a minister's wife before. Well, I can't spend time to tell

all that Miss Jaynes said in answer, but it seemed some of the big

folks in New York had started a new society, and its object was to

provide, as near as ever I could find out, such kind of necessary

notions for indigent young men studyin' to be ministers as they

couldn't well afford to buy for themselves,--such as steel-bowed specs

for the near-sighted ones, and white cravats, black silk gloves, and

linen-cambric handkerchiefs for 'em all,--in order, as Miss Jaynes

said, these young fellers might keep up a respectable appearance, and

not give a chance for the world's people to get a contemptible idee of

the ministry, on account of the shabby looks of the young men that had

laid out to foller that holy callin'. She said it was a cause that

ought to lay near the heart of every evangelical Christian man, and

especially the women. 'We mothers in Israel,' says Miss Jaynes, 'ought

to feel for these young Davids that have gone forth to give battle to

the Goliaths of sin that are a-stalkin' and struttin' round all over

the land.' She said the society was goin' to be a great institution,

with an office to New York, with an executive committee and three

secretaries in attendance there, and was a-goin' to employ a great

number of clergymen, out of a parish, to travel as agents collecting

funds; 'but,' says she, 'I've a better tack for collectin' than most

people, and I've concluded to canvass this town myself for donations

to this noble and worthy cause; and I've come to you, Miss Bugbee,'

says she, 'to lead off with your accustomed liberality.'--Well, what

does your ma do, but go into her room, to her draw, I suppose, and

fetch out a five-dollar bill, and give it to Miss Jaynes, which I'd

'a' had to work a week, stitchin' from mornin' to night, to have earnt

that five-dollar bill; though, of course, your ma had a right to burn

it up, if she'd 'a' been a mind to; only it made me ache to see it go

so, when there was thousands of poor starvin' ragged orphans needin'

it so bad. All to once Miss Jaynes wheeled and spoke to me: 'Well,

Miss Tira,' says she, 'can I have a dollar from you?'--'No, ma'am,'

says I.--'I supposed not,' says she; which would have been sassy in

anybody but the parson's wife. But I held my tongue, and out she went,

takin' no more notice of me than she did of Vi'let, nor half so

much,--for I see her kind o' look towards the old woman, as if she was

half a mind to ask her for a fourpence-ha'penny. Well, that was the

last on't for a spell, until after New Year's. I was stayin' then at

your Uncle James's, and one afternoon your ma sent for your Aunt

Eunice and me to come over and take tea. So we went over, and there

was several of the neighbors invited in,--Squire Bramhall's wife, and

them your ma used to go with most, and amongst the rest, of course,

Miss Jaynes. There had just before that been a donation party, New

Year's night, to the parson's, and the Dorcas Society had bought Miss

Jaynes a nice new Brussels carpet for her parlor, all cut and fitted

and made up. In the course of the afternoon Miss Bramhall spoke and

asked if the new carpet was put down, and if it fitted well. 'Oh,

beautiful!' says she, 'it fits the room like a glove; somebody must

have had pretty good eyes to took the measure so correct, and I not

know anything what was a-comin'; and I hope,' says she, 'ladies,

you'll take an early opportunity to drop in and see it; for there

a'n't one of you but what I'm under obligation to for this touchin'

token of your love,' (that's what she called it,)--'except,' says she,

of a sudden, 'except Miss Blake, whom, really, I hadn't noticed

before!'--I tell ye, Cornele, my ebenezer was up at this; for you

can't tell how mean and spiteful she spoke and looked, pretendin' as

if I was so insignificant a critter she hadn't taken notice of my

bein' there before, which, to be sure, she hadn't even bid me good

afternoon; and for my part, I hadn't put myself forward among such

women as was there, though I didn't feel beneath 'em, nor they didn't

think so, except Miss Jaynes.--Then she went on. 'Miss Blake,' says

she, 'I believe didn't mean no slight for not helpin' towards the

carpet; for she never gives to anything, as I know of,' says

she. 'I've often asked her for various objects, and have been as often

refused. The last time,' says she, 'I did expect to get somethin'; for

I asked only for a dollar to that noble society for providin' young

men, a-strugglin' to prepare themselves for usefulness in the

ministry, with some of the common necessaries of life, but she refused

me. I expect,' says she, a-sneerin' in such a way that I couldn't

stand it any longer, 'I expect Miss Blake is a-savin' all her money to

buy her settin'-out and furniture with; for I suppose,' says she,

lookin' more spiteful than ever, 'I suppose Miss Blake thinks that as

long as there's life there's hope for a husband.'--I happen to know

what all the ladies thought of this speech, for every one of 'em

afterwards told me; but, if you'll believe me, one or two of the

youngest of 'em kind of pretended to smile at the joke on't, when Miss

Jaynes looked round as if she expected 'em to laugh; for she thought,

I suppose, I was really and truly no account, bein' a cobbler's

daughter and a tailoress,--and that when the minister's wife insulted

me, I dars'n't reply, and all hands would stand by and applaud. But

she found out her mistake, and she begun to think so, when she see how

grave your ma and all the rest of the older ladies looked, for they

knew what was comin'. I'd bit my lips up till now, and held in out of

respect to the place and the company, but I thought it was due to

myself to speak at last. Says I, 'Miss Jaynes, I've always treated you

with civility and the respect due to your place; though I own I ha'n't

felt free to give my hard-earned wages away to objects I didn't know

much about, when, with my limited means, I could find places to bestow

what little I could spare without huntin' 'em up. I don't mean to

boast,' says I, 'of my benevolence, and I don't have gilt-framed

diplomas hung up in my room to certify to it, to be seen and read of

all men, as the manner of some is,--but,' says I, 'I _will_ say

that I've given this year twenty-five dollars to the Orphan Asylum, to

Hartford, and I've a five-dollar gold-piece in my puss,' says I, 'that

I can spare, and will give that more to the same charity, for the

privilege of tellin' before these ladies, that heard me accused of

being stingy, why I don't give to you when you ask me to, and

especially why I didn't give the last time you asked me. I would like

to tell why I didn't help sew in the Dorcas Society, to buy the new

carpet,' says I, 'but I don't want to hurt anybody's feelin's that

ha'n't hurt mine, and I'll forbear.'--By this time Miss Jaynes was

pale as a sheet. 'I'm sure,' says she, 'I don't care why you don't

choose to give, and I don't suppose any one else does. It's your own

affair,' says she, 'and you a'n't compelled to give unless you're a

mind to.'--'You should have thought of that before you twitted me,'

says I, 'before all this company.'--'Oh, Tira, never mind,' says Miss

Bramhall, 'let it all go!' But up spoke your Aunt Eunice, and says

she, 'It's no more than fair to hear Tira's reasons, after what's been

said.'"

"Good!" said little Helen; "hurrah for Aunt Eunice!"

"And your ma," resumed Statira, "I knew by her looks she was on my

side, though, it bein' her own house, she felt less free to say as

much as your Aunt Eunice did.--'In the first place,' says I, 'if I did

want to keep my money to buy furniture with, in case I should get a

husband, I expect I've a right to, for 'ta'n't likely,' says I, 'I

shall be lucky enough to have my carpets giv' to me. But that wa'n't

the reason I didn't put my name down for a dollar on that

subscription. One reason was, I knew the upshot on't would be that

somebody would be put up to suggestin' that the money should go for a

life-membership in the society for Miss Jaynes,' says I; 'and I don't

like to encourage anybody in goin' round beggin' for money to buy her

own promotion to a high seat in the synagogue.'--You ought to seen

Miss Jaynes's face then! It was redder'n any beet, for I'd hit the

nail square on the head, as it happened, and the ladies could scurcely

keep from smilin'.--'Then,' says I, 'I shouldn't be my father's

daughter, if I'd give a cent for a preacher that isn't smart enough to

get his own livin' and pay for his own clothes and eddication. To ask

poor women to pay for an able-bodied man's expenses,' says I, 'seems

to me like turnin' the thing wrong end foremost. A young feller that

a'n't smart enough to find himself in victuals and clothes won't be of

much help in the Lord's vineyard,' says I."

"And what did Mrs. Jaynes say?" asked little Helen, when Tira finally

came to a pause.

"Well, really, my dear," replied Miss Blake, "the woman had nothin' to

say, and so she said it. When I got through my speech I handed the

five-dollar gold-piece to your Aunt Eunice, to send to the Asylum, and

that ended it; for just then Dinah come in and said tea was ready, and

we all went out. It was rather stiff for a while, and after tea we all

went home; and for three long years Miss Jaynes never opened her face

to me, until I came here to live, this time. Now she finds it's for

her interest to make up, and so she tries to be as good as pie. But

though I mean to be civil, I'm no hypocrite, and I can't be all honey

and cream to them I don't like; and besides, it a'n't right to be."

"But you ought not to blame Laura because her sister affronted you,"

said Helen.

"I know that, my dear," replied Miss Blake; "and if I've hurt the

girl's feelin's, I'm sorry for't. She's tried hard to be friends with

me, but I've pushed her off; for, not bein' much acquainted, I was

jealous, at first, that Miss Jaynes had put her up to it, to try to

get round me in some way."

"Never!" cried Cornelia,--"my Laura is incapable of such baseness!"

"Well," said Statira, smiling, "come to know her, I guess you can't

find much guile in her, that's a fact. If I did her wrong by

mistrustin' her without cause, I'll try to make amends. It a'n't in me

to speak ha'sh even to a dog, if the critter looks up into my face and

wags his tail in honest good-nater. And I'll say this for Laura

Stebbins, anyhow, if she _is_ Miss Jaynes's sister,--she's got

the most takin' ways of 'most any grown-up person I ever see."

The reflection is painful to a generous mind, that, by harboring

unjust suspicions of another, one has been led to repel friendly

advances with indifference or disdain. In order to assuage some

remorseful pangs, Miss Blake began from this time to treat Laura with

distinguished favor. On the other hand, Laura, delighted at this

pleasant change in Miss Blake's demeanor, sought frequent

opportunities of testifying her joy and gratitude. In this manner an

intimacy began, which ripened at length into a firm and enduring

friendship. Laura soon commenced the practice of applying to her more

experienced friend for advice and direction in almost every matter,

great or small, and of confiding to her trust divers secrets and

confessions which she would never have ventured to repose even in

Cornelia's faithful bosom. This prudent habit Tira encouraged.

"I know, my dear," said she, one day, "I know what it is to be almost

alone in the world, and what a comfort it is to have somebody you can

rely on to tell your griefs and troubles to, and, as it were, get 'em

to help you bear 'em. So, my dear child, whenever you want to get my

notions on any point, just come right straight to me, if you feel like

it. I may not be able to give you the best advice, for I a'n't so

wise as you seem to think I be; however, I ha'n't lived nigh fifty

years in the world for naught, I trust, and without havin' learnt some

things worth knowin'; and though my counsel mayn't be worth much,

still you shall have the best I can give."

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" cried Laura, with such a burst of

passionate emotion that Miss Blake's eyes watered at the sight of

it. "My dear, dear, dear good friend! you don't know how glad I shall

be, if you will let me do as you say, and tell me what to do, and

scold me, and admonish and warn me! Oh, it will be such happiness to

have somebody to tell all my _real_ secrets and troubles to! I do

so need such a friend sometimes!"

"Don't I know it, you poor dear?" said Miss Blake, wiping her

eyes. "Ha'n't I been through the same straits myself? None but them

that's been a young gal themselves, an orphan without a mother to

confide in and to warn and guide 'em, knows what it is. But I do, my

dear; and though I shall be a pretty poor substitute for an own

mother, I'll do the best I can."

"Tira," said Laura, with a tearful and blushing cheek held up to the

good spinster's, "kiss me, won't you?--you never have."

"My dear," said Miss Blake, preparing to comply with this request by

wiping her lips with her apron, "you see I a'n't one of the kissin'

sort, and I scurcely ever kiss a grown-up person; but here's my hand,

and here's a kiss,"--with an old-fashioned smack that might have been

heard in the next room,--"for a token that you may always come to me

as freely as if I was your mother, relyin' upon my givin' you my

honest advice and opinion concernin' any affair that you may ask for

counsel upon. And furthermore, as girls naterally have a wish that the

very things they need some one to direct 'em the most in sha'n't be

known except by them they tell the secret to, I promise you, my dear,

that I'll be as close as a freemason concernin' any privacy that you

may trust me with, about any offer or courtin' matter of any kind."

"Oh, I shall never have any such secrets," said Laura, blushing; "my

sister never lets the beaux come to see me, you know. I'm going to be

an old maid."

"Well, perhaps you will be," said Miss Blake; "only they gen'ally

don't make old maids of such lookin' girls as you be."

But though Miss Blake took Laura into favor, she was by no means

inclined to do the same by Mrs. Jaynes, who, having found to her cost

that the ill-will of the humble sempstress was not to be lightly

contemned, was now plainly anxious to conciliate her. But Statira was

proof against all the wheedling and flattery of the parson's wife,

behaving towards her always with the same cool civility, and with

great self-control,--using none of the frequent opportunities afforded

her to make some taunt, or fling, or reproachful allusion to

Mrs. Jaynes's former conduct. Once, to be sure, when urged by the

parson's wife and a committee of the Dorcas Society to invite that

respectable body to convene at the Bugbee mansion for labor and

refreshment, Statira returned a reply so plainly spoken that it was

deemed rude and ungracious.

"Cornelia is mistress of this house, Miss Jaynes," said she, "and if

she belonged to your society, and wanted to have its weekly meetin's

here in turn, I'd do my best to give 'em somethin' good to eat and

drink. But as she has left the matter to me, I say 'No,' without any

misgivin' or doubt; and for fear I may be called stingy or unsociable,

I'll tell the reason why I say so,--and besides, it's due to you to

tell it. There's poor women, even in this town, put to it to get

employment by which they can earn bread for themselves and their

children. They can't go out to do housework, for they've got young

ones too little to carry with 'em, and maybe a whole family of

'em. Takin' in sewin' is their only resource. Well, ma'am, for ladies,

well-to-do and rich, to get together, under pretence of good works and

charity, and take away work from these poor women, by offerin' to do

it cheaper, underbiddin' of 'em for jobs, which I've known the thing

to be done, and then settin' over their ill-gotten tasks, sewin', and

gabblin' slander all the afternoon, to get money to buy velvet

pulpit-cushions or gilt chandeliers with, or to help pay some

missionary's passage to the Tongoo Islands, is, in my opinion, a

humbug, and, what's worse, a downright breach of the Golden Rule. At

any rate, with my notions, it would be hypocrisy in me to join in, and

that's why I don't invite the society here. I don't know but I have

spoke too strong; if so, I'm sorry; but I've had to earn my own

livin', ever since I was a girl, with my needle, and I know how hard

the lot of them is that have to do so too. Besides, I can't help

thinkin', what, perhaps, you never thought of, yourselves, ladies,

that every person, who, while they can just as well turn their hands

to other business, yet, for their own whim, or pleasure, or

convenience, or profit, chooses to do work, of which there a'n't

enough now in the world to keep in employment them that must get such

work to do, or else beg, or sin, or starve,--when I think, I say, that

every such person helps some poor cretur into the grave, or the jail,

or a place worse than both, I feel that strong talk isn't out of

place; and I've known this very Dorcas Society to send to Hartford and

get shirts to make, under price, and spend their blood-money

afterwards to buy a new carpet for the minister's parlor. That was a

fact, Miss Jaynes, though perhaps it wa'n't polite in me to speak

on't; and so for fear of worse, I'll say no more."

When this speech of his housekeeper came to the Doctor's ears, he

expressed so warm an approval of its sentiments, that several who

heard him began to be confirmed in suspicions they had previously

entertained, the nature of which may be inferred from a remark which

Mrs. Prouty confided to the ear of a trusty friend and crony. "Now do

you mind what I say, Miss Baker," said she, shaking her snuffy

forefinger in Mrs. Baker's face; "Doctor Bugbee'll marry Tira Blake

yet. Now do you just stick a pin there."

But the revolving seasons twice went their annual round, the great

weeping-willow-tree in the burying-ground twice put forth its tender

foliage in the early spring, and twice in autumn strewed with yellow

leaves the mound of Mrs. Bugbee's grave, while the predictions of

many, who, like Mrs. Prouty, had foretold the Doctor's second wedding,

still remained without fulfilment. Nay, at the end of two years after

his wife's death, Doctor Bugbee seemed to be no more disposed to

matrimony than in the first days of his bereavement. There were, to be

sure, floating on the current of village gossip, certain rumors that

he was soon to take a second wife; but as none of these reports agreed

touching the name of the lady, each contradicted all the others, and

so none were of much account. Besides, there was nothing in the

Doctor's appearance or behavior that seemed to warrant any of these

idle stories. It is the way with many hopeful widowers (as everybody

knows) to become, after an interval of decorous sadness, more brisk

and gay than even in their youthful days; bestowing unusual care upon

their attire and the adornment of their persons, and endeavoring, by a

courteous and gallant demeanor towards every unmarried lady, to

signify the great esteem in which they hold the female sex. But these

signs, and all others which betoken an ardent desire to win the

favor of the fair, were wanting in the Doctor's aspect and

deportment. Though, as my reader knows, he was by nature a man of

lively temper, he was now grown more sedate than he had ever been

before; and instead of attiring himself more sprucely than of old, he

neglected his apparel to such a degree, that, although few would have

noticed the untidy change, Statira was filled with continual alarms,

lest some invidious housewife should perceive it, and lay the blame at

her door. Except when called abroad to perform some professional duty,

he spent his time at home, although his family observed that he

secluded himself in his office, among his books and gallipots, more

than had been his wont, and that he sometimes indulged in moods of

silent abstraction, which had never been noticed in his manner until

of late. But these changes of demeanor seemed to betoken an enduring

sorrow for the loss of his wife, rather than to indicate a desire or

an intention to choose a successor to her. My readers, therefore, will

not be surprised to learn, by a plain averment of the simple truth,

that not one of all the score of ladies, whose names had been coupled

with his own, would Doctor Bugbee have married, if he could, and that

to none of them had he ever given any good reason for believing that

she stood especially high in his esteem.

[To be continued in the next Number.]

WHERE WILL IT END?

Wise men of every name and nation, whether poets, philosophers,

statesmen, or divines, have been trying to explain the puzzles of

human condition, since the world began. For three thousand years, at

least, they have been at this problem, and it is far enough from being

solved yet. Its anomalies seem to have been expressly contrived by

Nature to elude our curiosity and defy our cunning. And no part of it

has she arranged so craftily as that web of institutions, habits,

manners, and customs, in which we find ourselves enmeshed as soon as

we begin to have any perception at all, and which, slight and almost

invisible as it may seem, it is so hard to struggle with and so

impossible to break through. It may be true, according to the poetical

Platonism of Wordsworth, that "heaven lies about us in our infancy";

but we very soon leave it far behind us, and, as we approach manhood,

sadly discover that we have grown up into a jurisdiction of a very

different kind.

In almost every region of the earth, indeed, it is literally true that

"shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy." As

his faculties develope, he becomes more and more conscious of the

deepening shadows, as well as of the grim walls that cast them on his

soul, and his opening intelligence is earliest exercised in divining

who built them first, and why they exist at all. The infant Chinese,

the baby Calmuck, the suckling Hottentot, we must suppose, rest

unconsciously in the calm of the heaven from which they, too, have

emigrated, as well as the sturdy new-born Briton, or the freest and

most independent little Yankee that is native and to the manner born

of this great country of our own. But all alike grow gradually into a

consciousness of walls, which, though invisible, are none the less

impassable, and of chains, though light as air, yet stronger than

brass or iron. And everywhere is the machinery ready, though different

in its frame and operation in different torture-chambers, to crush out

the budding skepticism, and to mould the mind into the monotonous

decency of general conformity. Foe or Fetish, King or Kaiser, Deity

itself or the vicegerents it has appointed in its stead, are

answerable for it all. God himself has looked upon it, and it is very

good, and there is no appeal from that approval of the Heavenly

vision.

In almost every country in the world this deification of institutions

has been promoted by their antiquity. As nobody can remember when they

were not, and as no authentic records exist of their first

establishment, their genealogy can be traced direct to Heaven without

danger of positive disproof. Thus royal races and hereditary

aristocracies and privileged priesthoods established themselves so

firmly in the opinion of Europe, as well as of Asia, and still retain

so much of their _prestige_ there, notwithstanding the turnings

and overturnings of the last two centuries. This northern half of the

great American continent, however, seems to have been kept back by

Nature as a _tabula rasa_, a clean blackboard, on which the great

problem of civil government might be worked out, without any of the

incongruous drawbacks which have cast perplexity and despair upon

those who have undertaken its solution in the elder world. All the

elements of the demonstration were of the most favorable

nature. Settled by races who had inherited or achieved whatever of

constitutional liberty existed in the world, with no hereditary

monarch, or governing oligarchy, or established religion on the soil,

with every opportunity to avoid all the vices and to better all the

virtues of the old polities, the era before which all history had been

appointed to prepare the way seemed to have arrived, when the just

relations of personal liberty and civil government were to be

established forever.

And how magnificent the field on which the trophy of this final

victory of a true civilization was to be erected! No empire or

kingdom, at least since imperial Rome perished from the earth, ever

unrolled a surface so vast and so variegated, so manifold in its

fertilities and so various in its aspects of beauty and

sublimity. From the Northern wastes, where the hunter and the trapper

pursue by force or guile the fur-bearing animals, to the ever-perfumed

latitudes of the lemon and the myrtle,--from the stormy Atlantic,

where the skiff of the fisherman rocks fearlessly under the menace of

beetling crags amid the foam of angry breakers, to where the solemn

surge of the Pacific pours itself around our Western continent, boon

Nature has spread out fields which ask only the magic touch of Labor

to wave with every harvest and blush with every fruitage. Majestic

forests crown the hills, asking to be transformed into homes for man

on the solid earth, or into the moving miracles in which he flies on

wings of wind or flame over the ocean to the ends of the

earth. Exhaustless mineral treasures offer themselves to his hand,

scarce hidden beneath the soil, or lying carelessly upon the

surface,--coal, and lead, and copper, and the "all-worshipped ore" of

gold itself; while quarries, reaching to the centre, from many a

rugged hill-top, barren of all beside, court the architect and the

sculptor, ready to give shape to their dreams of beauty in the palace

or in the statue.

The soil, too, is fitted by the influences of every sky for the

production of every harvest that can bring food, comfort, wealth, and

luxury to man. Every family of the grasses, every cereal that can

strengthen the heart, every fruit that can delight the taste, every

fibre that can be woven into raiment or persuaded into the thousand

shapes of human necessity, asks but a gentle solicitation to pour its

abundance bounteously into the bosom of the husbandman. And men have

multiplied under conditions thus auspicious to life, until they swarm

on the Atlantic slope, are fast filling up the great valley of the

Mississippi, and gradually flow over upon the descent towards the

Pacific. The three millions, who formed the population of the Thirteen

States that set the British empire at defiance, have grown up into a

nation of nearly, if not quite, ten times that strength, within the

duration of active lives not yet finished. And in freedom from

unmanageable debt, in abundance and certainty of revenue, in the

materials for naval armaments, in the elements of which armies are

made up, in everything that goes to form national wealth, power, and

strength, the United States, it would seem, even as they are now,

might stand against the world in arms, or in the arts of peace. Are

not these results proofs irrefragable of the wisdom of the government

under which they have come to pass?

When the eyes of the thoughtful inquirer turn from the general

prospect of the national greatness and strength, to the geographical

divisions of the country, to examine the relative proportions of these

gifts contributed by each, he begins to be aware that there are

anomalies in the moral and political condition even of this youngest

of nations, not unlike what have perplexed him in his observation of

her elder sisters. He beholds the Southern region, embracing within

its circuit three hundred thousand more square miles than the domain

of the North, dowered with a soil incomparably more fertile, watered

by mighty rivers fit to float the argosies of the world, placed nearer

the sun and canopied by more propitious skies, with every element of

prosperity and wealth showered upon it with Nature's fullest and most

unwithdrawing hand, and sees, that, notwithstanding all this, the

share of public wealth and strength drawn thence is almost

inappreciable by the side of what is poured into the common stock by

the strenuous sterility of the North. With every opportunity and means

that Nature can supply for commerce, with navigable rivers searching

its remotest corners, with admirable harbors in which the navies of

the world might ride, with the chief articles of export for its staple

productions, it still depends upon its Northern partner to fetch and

carry all that it produces, and the little that it consumes. Possessed

of all the raw materials of manufactures and the arts, its inhabitants

look to the North for everything they need from the cradle to the

coffin. Essentially agricultural in its constitution, with every

blessing Nature can bestow upon it, the gross value of all its

productions is less by millions than that of the simple grass of the

field gathered into Northern barns. With all the means and materials

of wealth, the South is poor. With every advantage for gathering

strength and self-reliance, it is weak and dependent.--Why this

difference between the two?

The _why_ is not far to seek. It is to be found in the reward

which Labor bestows on those that pay it due reverence in the one

case, and the punishment it inflicts on those offering it outrage and

insult in the other. All wealth proceeding forth from Labor, the land

where it is honored and its ministers respected and rewarded must

needs rejoice in the greatest abundance of its gifts. Where, on the

contrary, its exercise is regarded as the badge of dishonor and the

vile office of the refuse and offscouring of the race, its largess

must be proportionably meagre and scanty. The key of the enigma is to

be found in the constitution of human nature. A man in fetters cannot

do the task-work that one whose limbs are unshackled looks upon as a

pastime. A man urged by the prospect of winning an improved condition

for himself and his children by the skill of his brain and the

industry of his hand must needs achieve results such as no fear of

torture can extort from one denied the holy stimulus of hope. Hence

the difference so often noticed between tracts lying side by side,

separated only by a river or an imaginary line; on one side of which,

thrift and comfort and gathering wealth, growing villages, smiling

farms, convenient habitations, school-houses, and churches make the

landscape beautiful; while on the other, slovenly husbandry,

dilapidated mansions, sordid huts, perilous wastes, horrible roads,

the rare spire, and rarer village school betray all the nakedness of

the land. It is the magic of motive that calls forth all this wealth

and beauty to bless the most sterile soil stirred by willing and

intelligent labor; while the reversing of that spell scatters squalor

and poverty and misery over lands endowed by Nature with the highest

fertility, spreading their leprous infection from the laborer to his

lord. All this is in strict accordance with the laws of God, as

expounded by man in his books on political economy.

Not so, however, with the stranger phenomenon to be discerned

inextricably connected with this anomaly, but not, apparently,

naturally and inevitably flowing from it. That the denial of his

natural and civil rights to the laborer who sows and reaps the

harvests of the Southern country should be avenged upon his enslaver

in the scanty yielding of the earth, and in the unthrift, the vices,

and the wretchedness which are the only crops that spring

spontaneously from soil blasted by slavery, is nothing strange. It is

only the statement of the truism in moral and in political economy,

that true prosperity can never grow up from wrong and wickedness. That

pauperism, and ignorance, and vice, that reckless habits, and debasing

customs, and barbarous manners should come of an organized degradation

of labor, and of cruelty and injustice crystallized into an

institution, is an inevitable necessity, and strictly according to the

nature of things. But that the stronger half of the nation should

suffer the weaker to rule over it in virtue of its weakness, that the

richer region should submit to the political tyranny of its

impoverished moiety because of that very poverty, is indeed a marvel

and a mystery. That the intelligent, educated, and civilized portion

of a race should consent to the sway of their ignorant, illiterate,

and barbarian companions in the commonwealth, and this by reason of

that uncouth barbarism, is an astonishment, and should be a hissing to

all beholders everywhere. It would be so to ourselves, were we not so

used to the fact, had it not so grown into our essence and ingrained

itself with our nature as to seem a vital organism of our being. Of

all the anomalies in morals and in politics which the history of

civilized man affords, this is surely the most abnormous and the most

unreasonable.

The entire history of the United States is but the record of the

evidence of this fact. What event in our annals is there that Slavery

has not set her brand upon it to mark it as her own? In the very

moment of the nation's birth, like the evil fairy of the nursery tale,

she was present to curse it with her fatal words. The spell then wound

up has gone on increasing in power, until the scanty formulas which

seemed in those days of infancy as if they would fade out of the

parchment into which they had been foisted, and leave no trace that

they ever were, have blotted out all beside, and statesmen and judges

read nothing there but the awful and all-pervading name of Slavery.

Once intrenched among the institutions of the country, this baleful

power has advanced from one position to another, never losing ground,

but establishing itself at each successive point more impregnably than

before, until it has us at an advantage that encourages it to demand

the surrender of our rights, our self-respect, and our honor. What was

once whispered in the secret chamber of council is now proclaimed upon

the housetops; what was once done by indirection and guile is now

carried with the high hand, in the face of day, at the mouth of the

cannon and by the edge of the sabre of the nation. Doctrines and

designs which a few years since could find no mouthpiece out of a

bar-room, or the piratical den of a filibuster, are now clothed with

power by the authentic response of the bench of our highest

judicatory, and obsequiously iterated from the oracular recesses of

the National Palace.

And the events which now fill the scene are but due successors in the

train that has swept over the stage ever since the nineteenth century

opened the procession with the purchase of Louisiana. The acquisition

of that vast territory, important as it was in a national point of

view,--but coveted by the South mainly as the fruitful mother of

slave-holding States, and for the precedent it established, that the

Constitution was a barrier only to what should impede, never to what

might promote, the interests of Slavery,--was the first great stride

she made as she stalked to her design. The admission of Missouri as a

slaveholding State, granted after a struggle that shook American

society to the centre, and then only on the memorable promises now

broken to the ear as well as to the hope, was the next vantage-ground

seized and maintained. The nearly contemporary purchase of Florida,

though in design and in effect as revolutionary an action as that of

Louisiana, excited comparatively little opposition. It was but the

following up of an acknowledged victory by the Slave Power. The long

and bloody wars in her miserable swamps, waged against the

humanity of savages that gave shelter to the fugitives from her

tyranny,--slave-hunts, merely, on a national scale and at the common

expense,--followed next in the march of events. Then Texas loomed in

the distance, and, after years of gradual approach and covert

advances, was first wrested from Mexico. Slavery next indissolubly

chained to her, and then, by a _coup d'état_ of astonishing impudence,

was added, by a flourish of John Tyler's pen, in the very article of

his political dissolution, to "the Area of Freedom!" Next came the war

with Mexico, lying in its pretences, bloody in its conduct, triumphant

in its results, for it won vast regions suitable for Slavery now, and

taught the way to win larger conquests when her ever-hungry maw should

crave them. What need to recount the Fugitive-Slave Bill, and the

other "Compromises" of 1850? or to recite the base repeal of the

Missouri Compromise, showing the slaveholder's regard for promises to

be as sacred as that of a pettifogger for justice or of a dicer for an

oath? or to point to the plains of Kansas, red with the blood of her

sons and blackened with the cinders of her towns, while the President

of the United States held the sword of the nation at her throat to

compel her to submission?

Success, perpetual and transcendent, such as has always waited on

Slavery in all her attempts to mould the history of the country and to

compel the course of its events to do her bidding, naturally excites a

measure of curiosity if not of admiration, in the mind of every

observer. Have the slave-owners thus gone on from victory to victory

and from strength to strength by reason of their multitude, of their

wealth, of their public services, of their intelligence, of their

wisdom, of their genius, or of their virtue? Success in gigantic

crime sometimes implies a strength and energy which compel a kind of

respect even from those that hate it most. The right supremacy of the

power that thus sways our destiny clearly does not reside in the

overwhelming numbers of those that bear rule. The entire sum of all

who have any direct connection with Slavery, as owners or hirers, is

less than THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND,--not half as many as the

inhabitants of the single city of New York! And yet even this number

exaggerates the numerical force of the dominant element in our

affairs. To approximate to the true result, it would be fair to strike

from the gross sum those owning or employing less than ten slaves, in

order to arrive at the number of slave-owners who really compose the

ruling influence of the nation. This would leave but a small fraction

over NINETY THOUSAND, men, women, and children, owning slaves enough

to unite them in a common interest. And from this should be deducted

the women and minors, actually owning slaves in their own right, but

who have no voice in public affairs. These taken away, and the

absentees flying to Europe or the North from the moral contaminations

and material discomforts inseparable from Slavery, and not much more

than FIFTY THOUSAND voting men will remain to represent this mighty

and all-controlling power!--a fact as astounding as it is

incontrovertible.

Oligarchies are nothing new in the history of the world. The

government of the many by the few is the rule, and not the exception,

in the politics of the times that have been and of those that now

are. But the concentration of the power that determines the policy,

makes the laws, and appoints the ministers of a mighty nation, in the

hands of less than the five-hundredth part of its members, is an

improvement on the essence of the elder aristocracies; while the

usurpation of the title of the Model Republic and of the Pattern

Democracy, under which we offer ourselves to the admiration and

imitation of less happy nations, is certainly a refinement on their

nomenclature.

This prerogative of power, too, is elsewhere conceded by the multitude

to their rulers generally for some especial fitness, real or

imaginary, for the office they have assumed. Some services of their

own or of their ancestors to the state, some superiority, natural or

acquired, of parts or skill, at least some specialty of high culture

and elegant breeding, a quick sense of honor, a jealousy of insult to

the public, an impatience of personal stain,--some or all of these

qualities, appealing to the gratitude or to the imagination of the

masses, have usually been supposed to inhere in the class they permit

to rule over them. By virtue of some or all of these things, its

members have had allowed to them their privileges and their

precedency, their rights of exemption and of preeminence, their voice

potential in the councils of the state, and their claim to be foremost

in its defence in the hour of its danger. Some ray of imagination

there is, which, falling on the knightly shields and heraldic devices

that symbolize their conceded superiority, at least dazzles the eyes

and delights the fancy of the crowd, so as to blind them to the

inhering vices and essential fallacies of the Order to whose will they

bow.

But no such consolations of delusion remain to us, as we stand face to

face with the Power which holds our destinies in its hand. None of

these blear illusions can cheat our eyes with any such false

presentments. No antiquity hallows, no public services consecrate, no

gifts of lofty culture adorn, no graces of noble breeding embellish

the coarse and sordid oligarchy that gives law to us. And in the

blighting shadow of Slavery letters die and art cannot live. What book

has the South ever given to the libraries of the world? What work of

art has she ever added to its galleries? What artist has she produced

that did not instinctively fly, like Allston, to regions in which

genius could breathe and art was possible? What statesman has she

reared, since Jefferson died and Madison ceased to write, save those

intrepid discoverers who have taught that Slavery is the corner-stone

of republican institutions, and the vital element of Freedom herself?

What divine, excepting the godly men whose theologic skill has

attained to the doctrine that Slavery is of the essence of the Gospel

of Jesus Christ? What moralist, besides those ethic doctors who teach

that it is according to the Divine Justice that the stronger race

should strip the weaker of every civil, social, and moral right? The

unrighteous partiality, extorted by the threats of Carolina and

Georgia in 1788, which gives them a disproportionate representation

because of their property in men, and the unity of interest which

makes them always act in behalf of Slavery as one man, have made them

thus omnipotent. The North, distracted by a thousand interests, has

always been at the mercy of whatever barbarian chief in the capital

could throw his slave whip into the trembling scale of party. The

government having been always, since this century began, at least, the

creature and the tool of the slaveholders, the whole patronage of the

nation, and the treasury filled chiefly by Northern commerce, have

been at their command to help manipulate and mould plastic Northern

consciences into practicable shapes. When the slave interest,

consisting, at its own largest account of itself, of less than THREE

HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND souls, has _thirty_ members of the

Senate, while the free-labor interest, consisting of at least

TWENTY-FOUR MILLIONS, SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND souls, has but

_thirty-two_, and when the former has a delegation of some score

of members to represent its slaves in the House, besides its own fair

proportion, can we marvel that it has achieved the mastery over us,

which is written in black and bloody characters on so many pages of

our history?

Such having been the absolute sway Slavery has exercised over the

facts of our history, what has been its influence upon the characters

of the men with whom it has had to do? Of all the productions of a

nation, its men are what prove its quality the most surely. How have

the men of America stood this test? Have those in the high places,

they who have been called to wait at the altar before all the people,

maintained the dignity of character and secured the general reverence

which marked and waited upon their predecessors in the days of our

small things? The population of the United States has multiplied

itself nearly tenfold, while its wealth has increased in a still

greater proportion, since the peace of 'Eighty-Three. Have the

Representative Men of the nation been made or maintained great and

magnanimous, too? Or is that other anomaly, which has so perplexed the

curious foreigner, an admitted fact, that in proportion as the country

has waxed great and powerful, its public men have dwindled from giants

in the last century to dwarfs in this? Alas, to ask the question is to

answer it. Compare Franklin, and Adams, and Jay, met at Paris to

negotiate the treaty of peace which was to seal the recognition of

their country as an equal sister in the family of nations, with

Buchanan, and Soulé, and Mason, convened at Ostend to plot the larceny

of Cuba! Sages and lawgivers, consulting for the welfare of a world

and a race, on the one hand, and buccaneers conspiring for the pillage

of a sugar-island on the other!

What men, too, did not Washington and Adams call around them in the

Cabinet!--how representative of great ideas! how historical! how

immortal! How many of our readers can name the names of their

successors of the present day? Inflated obscurities, bloated

insignificances, who knows or cares whence they came or what they are?

We know whose bidding they were appointed to obey, and what manner of

work they are ready to perform. And shall we dare extend our profane

comparisons even higher than the Cabinet? Shall we bring the shadowy

majesty of Washington's august idea alongside the microscopic

realities of to-day? Let us be more merciful, and take our departure

from the middle term between the Old and the New, occupied by Andrew

Jackson, whose iron will and doggedness of purpose give definite

character, if not awful dignity, to his image. In his time, the Slave

Power, though always the secret spring which set events in motion,

began to let its workings be seen more openly than ever before. And

from his time forward, what a graduated line of still diminishing

shadows have glided successively through the portals of the White

House! From Van Buren to Tyler, from Tyler to Polk, from Polk to

Fillmore, from Fillmore to Pierce! "Fine by degrees and beautifully

less," until it at last reached the vanishing point!

The baleful influence thus ever shed by Slavery on our national

history and our public men has not yet spent its malignant forces. It

has, indeed, reached a height which a few years ago it was thought the

wildest fanaticism to predict; but its fatal power will not be stayed

in the mid-sweep of its career. The Ordinance of 1787 torn to shreds

and scattered to the winds,--the line drawn in 1820, which the

slaveholders plighted their faith Slavery should never overstep,

insolently as well as infamously obliterated,--Slavery presiding in

the Cabinet, seated on the Supreme Bench, absolute in the halls of

Congress,--no man can say what shape its next aggression may not take

to itself. A direct attack on the freedom of the press and the liberty

of speech at the North, where alone either exists, were no more

incredible than the later insolences of its tyranny. The battle not

yet over in Kansas, for the compulsory establishment of Slavery there

by the interposition of the Federal arm, will be renewed in every

Territory as it is ripening into a State. Already warning voices are

heard in the air, presaging such a conflict in Oregon. Parasites

everywhere instinctively feel that a zeal for the establishment of

Slavery where it has been abolished, or its introduction where it had

been prohibited, is the highest recommendation to the Executive favor.

The rehabilitation of the African slave-trade is seriously proposed

and will be furiously urged, and nothing can hinder its accomplishment

but its interference with the domestic manufactures of the breeding

Slave States. The pirate Walker is already mustering his forces for

another incursion into Nicaragua, and rumors are rife that General

Houston designs wresting yet another Texas from Mexico. Mighty events

are at hand, even at the door; and the mission of them all will be to

fix Slavery firmly and forever on the throne of this nation.

Is the success of this conspiracy to be final and eternal? Are the

States which name themselves, in simplicity or in irony, the Free

States, to be always the satrapies of a central power like this? Are

we forever to submit to be cheated out of our national rights by an

oligarchy as despicable as it is detestable, because it clothes itself

in the forms of democracy, and allows us the ceremonies of choice, the

name of power, and the permission to register the edicts of the

sovereign? We, who broke the sceptre of King George, and set our feet

on the supremacy of the British Parliament, surrender ourselves, bound

hand and foot in bonds of our own weaving, into the hands of the

slaveholding Philistines! We, who scorned the rule of the aristocracy

of English acres, submit without a murmur, or with an ineffectual

resistance, to the aristocracy of American flesh and blood! Is our

spirit effectually broken? is the brand of meanness and compromise

burnt in uneffaceably upon our souls? and are we never to be roused,

by any indignities, to fervent resentment and effectual resistance?

The answer to these grave questions lies with ourselves alone. One

hundred thousand, or three hundred thousand men, however crafty and

unscrupulous, cannot forever keep under their rule more than twenty

millions, as much their superiors in wealth and intelligence as in

numbers, except by their own consent. If the growing millions are to

be driven with cartwhips along the pathway of their history by the

dwindling thousands, they have none to blame for it but themselves.

If they like to have their laws framed and expounded, their presidents

appointed, their foreign policy dictated, their domestic interests

tampered with, their war and peace made for them, their national fame

and personal honor tarnished, and the lie given to all their boastings

before the old despotisms, by this insignificant fraction of their

number,--scarcely visible to the naked eye in the assembly of the

whole people,--none can gainsay or resist their pleasure.

But will the many always thus submit themselves to the domination of

the few? We believe that the days of this ignominious subjection are

already numbered. Signs in heaven and on earth tell us that one of

those movements has begun to be felt in the Northern mind, which

perplex tyrannies everywhere with the fear of change. The insults and

wrongs so long heaped upon the North by the South begin to be

felt. The torpid giant moves uneasily beneath his mountain-load of

indignities. The people of the North begin to feel that they support a

government for the benefit of their natural enemies; for, of all

antipathies, that of slave labor to free is the most deadly and

irreconcilable. There never was a time when the relations of the North

and the South, as complicated by Slavery, were so well understood and

so deeply resented as now. In fields, in farmhouses, and in workshops,

there is a spirit aroused which can never be laid or exorcised till it

has done its task. We see its work in the great uprising of the Free

States against the Slave States in the late national election. Though

trickery and corruption cheated it of its end, the thunder of its

protest struck terror into the hearts of the tyrants. We hear its

echo, as it comes back from the Slave States themselves, in the

exceeding bitter cry of the whites for deliverance from the bondage

which the slavery of the blacks has brought upon them also. We

discern the confession of its might in the very extravagances and

violences of the Slave Power. It is its conscious and admitted

weakness that has made Texas and Mexico and Cuba, and our own

Northwestern territory, necessary to be devoured. It is desperation,

and not strength, that has made the bludgeon and the bowie-knife

integral parts of the national legislation. It has the American

Government, the American Press, and the American Church, in its

national organizations, on its side; but the Humanity and the

Christianity of the Nation and the World abhor and execrate it. They

that be against it are more than they that be for it.

It rages, for its time is short. And its rage is the fiercer because

of the symptoms of rebellion against its despotism which it discerns

among the white men of the South, who from poverty or from principle

have no share in its sway. When we speak of the South as

distinguished from the North by elements of inherent hostility, we

speak only of the governing faction, and not of the millions of

nominally free men who are scarcely less its thralls than the black

slaves themselves. This unhappy class of our countrymen are the first

to feel the blight which Slavery spreads around it, because they are

the nearest to its noxious power. The subjects of no European

despotism are under a closer _espionage,_ or a more organized

system of terrorism, than are they. The slaveholders, having the

wealth, and nearly all the education that the South can boast of,

employ these mighty instruments of power to create the public

sentiment and to control the public affairs of their region, so as

best to secure their own supremacy. No word of dissent to the

institutions under which they live, no syllable of dissatisfaction,

even, with any of the excesses they stimulate, can be breathed in

safety. A Christian minister in Tennessee relates an act of fiendish

cruelty inflicted upon a slave by one of the members of his church,

and he is forced to leave his charge, if not to fly the

country. Another in South Carolina presumes to express in conversation

his disapprobation of the murderous assault of Brooks on Senator

Sumner, and his pastoral relations are broken up on the instant, as if

he had been guilty of gross crime or flagrant heresy. Professor

Hedrick, in North Carolina, ventures to utter a preference for the

Northern candidate in the last presidential campaign, and he is

summarily ejected from his chair, and virtually banished from his

native State. Mr. Underwood, of Virginia, dares to attend the

convention of the party he preferred, and he is forbidden to return to

his home on pain of death. The blackness of darkness and the stillness

of death are thus forced to brood over that land which God formed so

fair, and made to be so happy.

That such a tyranny should excite an antagonistic spirit of resistance

is inevitable from the constitution of man and the character of

God. The sporadic cases of protest and of resistance to the

slaveholding aristocracy, which lift themselves occasionally above the

dead level of the surrounding despotism, are representative

cases. They stand for much more than their single selves. They prove

that there is a wide-spread spirit of discontent, informing great

regions of the slave-land, which must one day find or force an

opportunity of making itself heard and felt. This we have just seen in

the great movement in Missouri, the very nursing-mother of

Border-Ruffianism itself, which narrowly missed making Emancipation

the policy of the majority of the voters there. Such a result is the

product of no sudden culture. It must have been long and slowly

growing up. And how could it be otherwise? There must be intelligence

enough among the non-slaveholding whites to see the difference there

is between themselves and persons of the same condition in the Free

States. Why can they have no free schools? Why is it necessary that a

missionary society be formed at the North to furnish them with such

ministers as the slave-master can approve? Why can they not support

their own ministers, and have a Gospel of Free Labor preached to them,

if they choose? Why are they hindered from taking such newspapers as

they please? Why are they subjected to a censorship of the press,

which dictates to them what they may or may not read, and which

punishes booksellers with exile and ruin for keeping for sale what

they want to buy? Why must Northern publishers expurgate and

emasculate the literature of the world before it is permitted to reach

them? Why is it that the value of acres increases in a geometrical

ratio, as they stretch away towards the North Star from the frontier

of Slavery? These questions must suggest their sufficient answer to

thousands of hearts, and be preparing the way for the insurrection of

which the slaveholders stand in the deadliest fear,--that of the

whites at their gates, who can do with them and their institutions

what seems to them good, when once they know their power, and choose

to put it forth. The unity of interest of the non-slaveholders of the

South with the people of the Free States is perfect, and it must one

day combine them in a unity of action.

The exact time when the millions of the North and of the South shall

rise upon this puny mastership, and snatch from its hands the control

of their own affairs, we cannot tell,--nor yet the authentic shape

which that righteous insurrection will take unto itself. But we know

that when the great body of any nation is thoroughly aroused, and

fully in earnest to abate a mischief or to right a wrong, nothing can

resist its energy or defeat its purpose. It will provide the way, when

its will is once thoroughly excited. Men look out upon the world they

live in, and it seems as if a change for the better were hopeless and

impossible. The great statesmen, the eminent divines, the reverend

judges, the learned lawyers, the wealthy landholders and merchants are

all leagued together to repel innovation. But the earth still moves

in its orbit around the sun; decay and change and death pursue their

inevitable course; the child is born and grows up; the strong man

grows old and dies; the law of flux and efflux never ceases, and lo!

ere men are aware of it, all things have become new. Fresh eyes look

upon the world, and it is changed. Where are now Calhoun, and Clay,

and Webster? Where will shortly be Cass, and Buchanan, and Benton, and

their like? Vanished from the stage of affairs, if not from the face

of Nature. Who are to take their places? God knows. But we know that

the school in which men are now in training for the arena is very

different from the one which formed the past and passing generations

of politicians. Great ideas are abroad, challenging the encounter of

youth. Angels wrestle with the men of this generation, as with the

Patriarch of old, and it is our own fault if a blessing be not

extorted ere they take their flight. Principles, like those which in

the earlier days of the republic elevated men into statesmen, are now

again in the field, chasing the policies which have dwarfed their sons

into politicians. These things are portentous of change,--perhaps

sudden, but, however delayed, inevitable.

And this change, whatever the outward shape in which it may incarnate

itself, in the fulness of time, will come of changed ideas, opinions,

and feelings in the general mind and heart. All institutions, even

those of the oldest of despotisms, exist by the permission and consent

of those who live under them. Change the ideas of the thronging

multitudes by the banks of the Neva, or on the shores of the

Bosphorus, and they will be changed into Republicans and Christians in

the twinkling of an eye. Not merely the Kingdom of Heaven, but the

kingdoms of this world, are within us. Ideas are their substance;

institutions and customs but the shadows they cast into the visible

sphere. Mould the substance anew, and the projected shadow must

represent the altered shape within. Hence the dread despots feel, and

none more than the petty despots of the plantation, of whatever may

throw the light of intelligence across the mental sight of their

slaves. Men endure the ills they have, either because they think them

blessings, or because they fear lest, should they seek to fly them, it

might be to others that they know not of. The present Bonaparte holds

France in a chain because she is willing that he should. Let her but

breathe upon the padlock, and, like that in the fable, it will fade

into air, and he and his dynasty will vanish with it. So the people of

the North submit to the domination of the South because they are used

to it, and are doubtful as to what may replace it. Whenever the

millions, North and South, whom Slavery grinds under her heel, shall

be resolutely minded that her usurpation shall cease, it will

disappear, and forever. As soon as the stone is thrown the giant will

die, and men will marvel that they endured him so long. But this can

only come to pass by virtue of a change yet to be wrought in the

hearts and minds of men. Ideas everywhere are royal;--here they are

imperial. It is the great office of genius, and eloquence, and sacred

function, and conspicuous station, and personal influence to herald

their approach and to prepare the way before them, that they may

assert their state and give holy laws to the listening nation. Thus a

glorious form and pressure may be given to the coming age. Thus the

ideal of a true republic, of a government of laws made and executed by

the people, of which bards have sung and prophets dreamed, and for

which martyrs have suffered and heroes died, may yet be possible to

us, and the great experiment of this Western World be indeed a Model,

instead of a Warning to the nations.

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY.

Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze,

By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy,

From stainless quarries of deep-buried days.

There, as I muse in soothing melancholy,

Your faces glow in more than mortal youth,

Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly,--

The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden.

Ah, never master that drew mortal breath

Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death,

Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden!

Thou paintest that which struggled here below

Half understood, or understood for woe,

And, with a sweet forewarning,

Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow

Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Homoeopathic Domestic Physician_, etc., etc. By J. H. PULTE,

M.D., Author of "Woman's Medical Guide," etc. Twenty-fourth

thousand. Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys, & Co. London: James Epps,

170, Piccadilly, 1857.

Of course the reader understands the following notice to be written by

a venerable practitioner, who carries a gold-headed cane, and does not

believe in any medical authority later than Sydenham. Listen to him,

then, and remember that if anything in the way of answer, or

remonstrance, or controversial advertisement is sent to the

head-quarters of this periodical, it will go directly into the basket,

which, entering, a manuscript leaves all hope behind. The "old salts"

of the "Atlantic" do not go for non-committal and neutrality, or any

of that kind of nonsense. Our oracle with the gold stick must have

the ground to himself, or keep his wisdom for another set of

readers. A quarrel between "Senex" and "Fairplay" would be amusing,

but expensive. We have no space for it; and the old gentleman, though

he can use his cane smartly for one of his age, positively declines

the game of single-stick. Hear him.

--The book mentioned above lies before us with its valves open,

helpless as an oyster on its shell, inviting the critical pungent, the

professional acid, and the judicial impaling trident. We will be

merciful. This fat little literary mollusk is well-conditioned, of

fair aspect, and seemingly good of its kind. Twenty-four thousand

individuals,--we have its title-page as authority,--more or less

lineal descendants of Solomon, have become the fortunate possessors of

this plethoric guide to earthly immortality. They might have done

worse; for the work is well printed, well arranged, and

typographically creditable to the great publishing-house which honors

Cincinnati by its intelligent enterprise. The purchasers have done

very wisely in buying a book which will not hurt their eyes. Mr. Otis

Clapp, bibliopolist, has the work, and will be pleased to supply it to

an indefinite number of the family above referred to.

--Men live in the immediate neighborhood of a great menagerie, the

doors of which are always open. The beasts of prey that come out are

called diseases. They feed upon us, and between their teeth we must

all pass sooner or later,--all but a few, who are otherwise taken care

of. When these animals attack a man, most of them give him a scratch

or a bite, and let him go. Some hold on a little while; some are

carried about for weeks or months, until the carrier drops down, or

they drop off. By and by one is sure to come along that drags down the

strongest, and makes an end of him.

Most people know little or nothing of these beasts, until all at once

they find themselves attacked by one of them. They are therefore

liable to be frightened by those that are not dangerous, and careless

with those that are destructive. They do not know what will soothe,

and what will exasperate them. They do not even know the dens of many

of them, though they are close to their own dwellings.

A physician is one that has lived among these beasts, and studied

their aspects and habits. He knows them all well, and looks them in

the face, and lays his hand on their backs daily. They seem, as it

were, to know him, and to greet him with such _risus sardonicus_

as they can muster. He knows that his friends and himself have all

got to be eaten up at last by them, and his friends have the same

belief. Yet they want him near them at all times, and with them when

they are set upon by any of these their natural enemies. He goes,

knowing pretty well what he can do and what he cannot.

He can talk to them in a quiet and sensible way about these terrible

beings, concerning which they are so ignorant, and liable to harbor

such foolish fancies. He can frighten away some of the lesser kind of

animals with certain ill-smelling preparations he carries about

him. Once in a while he can draw the teeth of some of the biggest, or

throttle them. He can point out their dens, and so keep many from

falling into their jaws.

This is a great deal to promise or perform, but it is not all that is

expected of him. Sick people are very apt to be both fools and

cowards. Many of them confess the fact in the frankest possible

way. If you doubt it, ask the next dentist about the wisdom and

courage of average manhood under the dispensation of a bad tooth. As a

tooth is to a liver, so are the dentists' patients to the doctors', in

the want of the two excellences above mentioned.

Those not over-wise human beings called patients are frequently a

little unreasonable. They come with a small scratch, which Nature

will heal very nicely in a few days, and insist on its being closed at

once with some kind of joiner's glue. They want their little coughs

cured, so that they may breathe at their ease, when they have no lungs

left that are worth mentioning. They would have called in Luke the

physician to John the Baptist, when his head was in the charger, and

asked for a balsam that would cure cuts. This kind of thing cannot be

done. But it is very profitable to lie about it, and say that it can

be done. The people who make a business of this lying, and profiting

by it, are called quacks.

--But as patients wish to believe in all manner of "cures," and as all

doctors love to believe in the power of their remedies and as nothing

is more open to self-deception than medical experience, the whole

matter of therapeutics has always been made a great deal more of than

the case would justify. It has been an inflated currency,--fifty

pretences on paper, to one fact of true, ringing metal.

Many of the older books are full of absurd nostrums. A century ago,

Huxham gave messes to his patients containing more than four hundred

ingredients. Remedies were ordered that must have been suggested by

the imagination; things odious, abominable, unmentionable; flesh of

vipers, powder of dead men's bones, and other horrors, best mused in

expressive silence. Go to the little book of Robert Boyle,--wise man,

philosopher, revered of cures for the most formidable diseases, many

of them of this fantastic character, that disease should seem to have

been a thing that one could turn off at will, like gas or water in our

houses. Only there were rather too many specifics in those days. For

if one has "an excellent approved remedy" that never fails, it seems

unnecessary to print a list of twenty others for the same

purpose. This is wanton excess; it is gilding the golden pill, and

throwing fresh perfume on the Mistura Assafoetidae.

As the observation of nature has extended, and as mankind have

approached the state of only _semi_-barbarism in which they now

exist, there has been an improvement. The materia medica has been

weeded; much that was worthless and revolting has been thrown

overboard; simplicity has been introduced into prescriptions; and the

whole business of _drugging_ the sick has undergone a most

salutary reform. The great fact has been practically recognized, that

the movements of life in disease obey laws which, under the

circumstances, are on the whole salutary, and only require a limited

and occasional interference by any special disturbing agents. The list

of specifics has been reduced to a very brief catalogue, and the

delusion which had exaggerated the power of drugging for so many

generations has been tempered down by sound and systematic

observation.

Homoeopathy came, and with one harlequin bound leaped out of its

century backwards into the region of quagmires and fogs and mirages,

from which true medical science was painfully emerging. All the

trumpery of exploded pharmacopoeias was revived under new names. Even

the domain of the loathsome has been recently invaded, and simpletons

are told in the book before us to swallow serpents' poison; nay, it is

said that the _pediculis capitis_ is actually prescribed in

infusion,--hunted down in his capillary forest, and transferred to the

digestive organs of those he once fed upon.

It falsely alleged one axiom as the basis of existing medical

practice, namely, _Contraria contrarüs curantur_,--"Contraries

are cured by contraries." No such principle was ever acted upon,

exclusively, as the basis of medical practice. The man who does not

admit it as _one_ of the principles of practice would, on

_medical_ principles, refuse a drop of cold water to cool the

tongue of Dives in fiery torments. The only unconditional principle

ever recognized by medical science has been, that diseases are to be

treated by the remedies that experience shows to be useful. The

universal use of both _cold_ and _hot_ external and internal

remedies in various inflammatory states puts the garrote at once on

the babbling throat of the senseless assertion of the homaeopathists,

and stultifies for all time the nickname "allopathy."

It falsely alleged a second axiom, _Similia similibus

curantur_,--"Like is cured by like,"--as the basis of its own

practice; for it does not keep to any such rule, as every page of the

book before us abundantly shows.

It subjected credulous mankind to the last of indignities, in forcing

it to listen to that doctrine of infinitesimals and potencies which is

at once the most epigrammatic of paradoxes, and the crowning exploit

of pseudo-scientific audacity.

It proceeded to prove itself true by juggling statistics; some of the

most famous of which, we may remark, are very well shown up by

Professor Worthington Hooker, in a recent essay. And having done all

these things, it sat down in the shadow of a brazen bust of its

founder, and invited mankind to join in the Barmecide feast it had

spread on the coffin of Science; who, however, proved not to have been

buried in it,--indeed, not to have been buried at all.

Of course, it had, and has, a certain success. Its infinitesimal

treatment being a nullity, patients are never hurt by drugs, _when

it is adhered to_. It pleases the imagination. It is image-worship,

relic-wearing, holy-water-sprinkling, transferred from the spiritual

world to that of the body. Poets accept it; sensitive and spiritual

women become sisters of charity in its service. It does not offend the

palate, and so spares the nursery those scenes of single combat in

which infants were wont to yield at length to the pressure of the

spoon and the imminence of asphyxia. It gives the ignorant, who have

such an inveterate itch for dabbling in physic, a book and a doll's

medicine-chest, and lets them play doctors and doctresses without fear

of having to call in the coroner. And just so long as unskilful and

untaught people cannot tell coincidences from cause and effect in

medical practice,--which to do, the wise and experienced know how

difficult!--so long it will have plenty of "facts" to fall back

upon. Who can blame a man for being satisfied with the argument, "I

was ill, and am well,--great is Hahnemann!"? Only this argument serves

all impostors and impositions. It is not of much value, but it is

irresistible, and therefore quackery is immortal.

Homaeopathy is one of its many phases; the most imaginative, the most

elegant, and, it is fair to say, the least noxious in its direct

agencies. "It is melancholy,"--we use the recent words of the

world-honored physician of the Queen's household, Sir John

Forbes,--"to be forced to make admissions in favor of a system so

utterly false and despicable as Homaeopathy." Yet we must own that it

may have been indirectly useful, as the older farce of the weapon

ointment certainly was, in teaching medical practitioners to place

more reliance upon nature. Most scientific men see through its

deceptions at a glance. It may be practised by shrewd men and by

honest ones; rarely, it must be feared, by those who are both shrewd

and honest. As a psychological experiment on the weakness of

cultivated minds, it is the best trick of the century.

--Here the old gentleman took his cane and walked out to cool himself.

FOREIGN.

It is an old remark of Lessing, often repeated, but nevertheless true,

that Frenchmen, as a general rule, are sadly deficient in the mental

powers suited to _objective_ observation, and therefore eminently

disqualified for reliable reports of travels. Among the host of French

writing travellers or travelling writers, on whatever foreign

countries, there have always been very few who looked at foreign

countries, nations, institutions, and achievements, with anything like

fairness of judgment and capacity of understanding. For an average

Frenchman, Molière's renowned juxtaposition of

"Paris, la cour, le monde, l'univers,"

is a gospel down to this day; and no country can so justly complain of

being constantly misunderstood and misrepresented by French tourists

as ours. The more difficult it is for a Frenchman not to glance

through colored spectacles from the Palais Royal at whatever does not

belong to "the Great Nation," the more praise those few of them

deserve who give to the world correct and impartial impressions of

travel and reliable ethnological works.

Such is the case with two works which we are glad to recommend to our

readers. The first is

_La Norwège_, par LOUIS ENAULT. Paris: Hachette. 1857.

Norway, though a member of the European family, with a population once

so influential in the world's history, is comparatively the least

known of all civilized countries to the world at large, and what

little we know of it is of a very recent date,--Stephens's and Leopold

von Buch's works being not much more than a quarter of a century old,

while Bayard Taylor's lively sketches in the "New York Tribune" are

almost wet still, and not yet complete. The latter and M. Enault's

book, when compared with each other, leave not the slightest doubt

that each observes carefully and conscientiously in his own way, that

both possess peculiar gifts for studying and describing correctly what

there is worth studying and describing in this _terra incognita_, and

that we can rely on both. Mr. Taylor is more picturesque, lively,

fascinating, and drastic; M. Enault more thorough, quiet, and reserved

in the expression of his opinions. The parts seem to be

interchanged,--the Frenchman exhibiting more of the Anglo-Saxon, the

American more of the French genius; but both confirm each other's

statements admirably, and should be read side by side. If our readers

wish to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the workings of the

laws and institutions, with the statistical, economical, and

geographical facts, the society and manners, the later history and

future prospects of Norway, they will find here a work trustworthy in

every respect.

_Les Anglais et l'Inde_, avec Notes, Pièces justificatives et

Tableaux statistiques, par E. DE VALBEZEN. Paris. 1857.

This is no narrative of travel, though evidently written by one who

has been for a considerable time an eyewitness of Indian affairs, and

by a man of acute mind and quick and comprehensive perception,

thoroughly versed in the history and condition of India. It is a

treatise on all those topics bearing upon the present political,

social, and commercial state of things there, beginning with the

exposition of the English governmental institutions there existing,

describing the country, its productions and resources, its various

populations, its social relations, its agriculture, commerce, and

wealth, and concluding with statistical and other documents in support

of the author's statements. It gives a nearly systematical and

complete picture of Indian affairs, enabling the reader to understand

the present situation of the country and its foreign rulers, and to

form a judgment on all corresponding topics. The style is classical,

though somewhat concise and epigrammatic, giving proof everywhere of a

mind that forms its own conclusions and takes independent,

statesmanlike views. The author refrains from obtruding his own

opinions on the reader, leaving things to speak for themselves. He is

not ostensibly antagonistic to the English, as we should expect from a

true Frenchman,--is no cordial hater of "_perfide Albion_." You

cannot, from his book, with any show of reason, infer that he is a

Jesuit, a French missionary, a merchant, a governmental employé, or a

simple traveller; but you feel instinctively that he is wide-awake,

shrewd, and reserved, and that you may trust his reports in the

main. He refers, for proof of his statements, mostly to English

documents, and does not try to preoccupy your mind. Particularly

noteworthy is what he says of the political economy of India; he

controverts effectively the prevailing opinion that it is the richest

country in the world,--showing its real poverty, in spite of its great

natural resources, and the almost hopeless task of improving these

resources. For the American merchant this is a very readable book,

warning him to refrain from too hastily investing his capital and

enterprise in Indian commerce,--India being the most insecure of all

countries for foreign commercial undertakings; and in general, there

are so many entirely new and startling revelations in it, that, to any

one interested in Indian matters, it well repays reading.

_Histoire de la Révolution Française_, (1789-1799,) Par

THÉOD. H. BARRAU. Paris: Hachette. 1857.

We cannot vouch that we have here a new, original history of this

important epoch, based on an independent study of historical sources;

but it is the very first history of the French Revolution we have

known, not written in a partisan spirit, and bent on falsifying the

facts in order to make political capital or to flatter national

prejudices. It bears no evidence of any tendency whatever,--perhaps

only because, with its more than five hundred pages, it is too short

for that.

_Histoire de France au XVI. Siècle_, par MICHÉLET. Tom. 10.

_Henri IV. et Richelieu_.

Michélet is too well known as a truly Republican historiographer and

truly humane and noble writer, and the former volumes of this history

have been too long before the public, to require for this volume a

particular recommendation. It begins with the last _décade_ of the

sixteenth century, and concludes with the year 1626. We are no

particular admirers of Michélet's historical style and method of

delineation, but we acknowledge his sense of historical justice, his

unprejudiced mind, and his Republicanism, even when treating a subject

so delicate, and so dear to Frenchmen, as Henry IV. Doing justice to

whatever was really admirable in the character of this much beloved

king, he overthrows a good many superstitious ideas current concerning

him even down to our days. He shows that the Utopian, though

benevolent project, ascribed to Henry, of establishing an everlasting

peace by revising the map of Europe and constituting a political

equilibrium between the several European powers, never in fact existed

in the king's mind, nor even in Sully's, whom he equally divests of

much unfounded glory and fictitious greatness. No doubt, but for his

fickleness and inconsistency, Henry could have done a good deal toward

realizing such ideas and reforming European politics; but it is saying

too much for Henry's influence on the popular opinions of Europe, to

affirm, what Michélet gives us to understand, that he could have

combined the nations of Europe against all their depraved rulers

together.

_La Liberté_, par ÉMILE DE GIRARDIN. Paris. 1857.

This book contains a discussion between the author and M. de

Lourdoueix, ex-editor of the "Gazette de France," written in the form

of letters, on the various topics connected with the notion of

Liberty. Girardin is, no doubt, the most genial of all living French

writers on Socialism and Politics. He belongs neither to the fanatical

school of Communists and Social Equalizers by force and "_par ordre

da Mufti_," nor to the class of pliable tools of Imperial or Royal

Autocracy. He is the only writer who, in the face of the prevailing

restrictions upon the press in France, dares to speak out his whole

mind, and to preach the Age of Reason in Politics and in the Social

System. He is full of new ideas, which should, we think, be very

attractive to American readers; and it is, indeed, strange that his

writings are so little read and reviewed on this side of the

ocean. His ideas on general education, on the total extinction of

authority or government, on the abolition of public punishments of

every kind, on the doing away with standing armies, war, and tyranny,

and on making the State a great Assurance Company against all

imaginable misfortunes and their consequences, are a fair index of the

best philosophemes of the European mind since the last Revolution. We

do not say that we approve every one of his issues and conclusions,

but we insist most earnestly, that this book and similar ones, bearing

testimony to what the political and social thinkers of the day in

Europe are revolving in their minds, should be read and reviewed under

the light of American institutions and ideas. The reader enjoys in the

present book the great advantage of seeing the ideas of the Social

Reformers discussed _pro_ and _contra_,--M. Lourdoueix being

their obstinate adversary.

_Mémoires de M. Joseph Prudhomme_, par HENRI MONNIER. 2

vols. Paris. 1857.

This is not what is commonly called _mémoires_,--to wit,

historical recollections modified by the subjective impressions of

eyewitnesses to the past; it is rather a novel or romance in the form

of _mémoires_, ridiculing the predominant _bourgeoisie_ of

the Old World, and sketching the whole life of a _bourgeois_,

from infancy to green old age. For readers, who, through travel in

Europe and acquaintance with French literature and tastes, are enabled

to understand the many nice allusions contained in this novel, it is a

very entertaining book.

1. _Kraft und Stoff_. By G. BÜCHNER. Fourth edition. 1857.

2. _Materie und Geist_. By the same. 1857.

It is certainly a remarkable sign of the times, that a book treating

of purely scientific matters,--physiological facts and ideas,--like

the first of these, of which the second is the complement, should in a

very few years have attained to its fourth edition in Germany. All

those works on Natural Science, by Alexander von Humboldt, Oersted, Du

Bois-Raymond, Cotta, Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, Rossmässler, Ule,

Müller, and others, which have appeared since the Revolution of 1848,

uniting a more popular and intelligible style with a purely scientific

treatment of the matter-of-fact, irrespective of the religious and

political dogmas that conflict with the results of natural science,

have met with decided success in Germany and France. They are

extensively read and appreciated, even by the less educated and

learned classes. Among these works, that of Büchner ranks high, and

it is therefore strange that we have seen it hitherto reviewed in no

American journal. This may serve us as an excuse for noticing this

fourth edition, though it is little improved over the former ones. It

exhibits the last results of the science of physiology, in a

scientific, but rather popular method of exposition. There is quite a

hive of new ideas and intuitions contained in it,--ideas conflicting,

it is true, with many received dogmas, and irreconcilable with

orthodoxy; but it is of no use to shut our eyes to these ideas, as

though the danger threatening from this side could be averted by

imitating the policy of the ostrich. They should be faced and

examined; the danger is far greater from ignoring them. It is

impossible that ideas, largely entertained and cultivated by a nation

so expert in thinking, so versed in science and literature as the

Germans, should have no interest for the great, intelligent American

public. Natural Science may be said to form, at present, an integral

portion of the religion of the Germans. It is, at least, a matter of

ethnological and historical interest to learn in what regions of

thought and speculation our German contemporaries are at home, and

wherein they find their mental happiness and delight.

_Die deutsche komische und humoristische Dichtung seit Beginn des

16. Jahrhunderts bis auf unsere Zeit_. Von IGNAZ HUB. Nürnberg:

Ebner. 1857.

Two volumes of this interesting work are coming out at the same

time,--one containing the second of the five parts into which the

prose anthology is divided, with comical and humorous pieces from the

sixteenth century, (for instance, extracts from "Fortunatus," the

"Historia" of Dr. J. Faust, "Die Schildbürger," Desid, Erasmus's

"Gespräche," etc.,)--the other containing a collection of poetry of

the same kind, belonging to the present century, and forming part of

the third volume, with pieces by Uhland, Eichendorff, Rückert,

Sapphir, Wm. Müller, Immermann, Palten, Hoffmann, Kopisch, Heine,

Lenau, Möricke, Grün, Wackernagel, and many others. The anthology is

accompanied with biographical and historical notes, and explanations

of provincialisms and such words as to the American reader of German

would be likely to be otherwise unintelligible; so that he may thus,

without too much trouble, satisfactorily enjoy this treasury of

entertainment. The Germans may well be proud of such literary riches,

in which England alone surpasses them.

_Thüringer Naturen, Charakter-und Sittenbilder in

Erzählungen_. Von OTTO LUDWIG. Erster Band. _Die Heiterethei und

ihr Widerspiel_. Frankfurt. 1857.

This is one of the numerous imitations of the celebrated

"Dorfgeschichten," by Berthold Auerbach. The latter introduced, in a

time of literary poverty, a wide range of new subjects for epical

treatment,--the life of German peasants, with their simple, healthy,

vigorous natures undepraved by a spurious civilization. In painting

these sinewy figures, full of a character of their own, he was very

felicitous, had an enormous success, and drew a host of less gifted

followers after him. Herr Ludwig is one of these. We shall not despair

of his becoming, at some future time, a second Auerbach; but he is not

one yet. There is, in this work, too much spreading out and

extenuation of a material which, in itself not very rich and varied,

requires great skill to mould into an epic form. But the author has a

remarkable power of drawing true, lifelike characters, and developing

them psychologically. It is refreshing to see that the German literary

taste is becoming gradually more _realistic,_ pure, and natural,

turning its back on the romantic school of the French.

_May Carols._ By AUBREY DE VERE. London.

1857.

The name of Aubrey de Vere has for some years past been familiar to

the lovers of poetry, as that of a scholarly and genial poet. His

successive volumes have shown a steady growth in poetic power and

elevation of spirit. While gaining a firmer mastery over the

instruments of poetry he has struck from them a deeper, fuller, and

more significant tone. In this his last volume, which has lately

appeared, his verse is brought completely into the service of the

Church. The "May Carols" are poems celebrating the Virgin Mary in her

month of May. For that month, and for the Roman church, Mr. De Vere

has done in this volume what Keble did for the festivals of the year,

and the English church, in his "Christian Year." Catholicism in

England has produced no poet since the days of Crashaw so sincere in

his piety, so sweet in his melody, so pure in spirit as De Vere. And

the volume is not for Roman Catholic readers alone. Others may be

touched by its religious fervor, and charmed with its beauties of

description or of feeling. It is full and redolent of spring. The

sweetness of the May air flows through many of its verses,--of that

season when

Trees, that from winter's gray eclipse

Of late but pushed their topmost plume,

Or felt with green-touched finger-tips

For spring, their perfect robes assume.

While, vague no more, the mountains stand

With quivering line or hazy hue;

But drawn with finer, firmer, hand,

And settling into deeper blue.

Mr. De Vere is an exquisite student of nature, with fine perceptions

that have been finely cultivated. Take this picture of the lark:--

From his cold nest the skylark springs;

Sings, pauses, sings; shoots up anew;

Attains his topmost height, and sings

Quiescent in his vault of blue.

And here is a description of the later spring:--

Brow-bound with myrtle and with gold,

Spring, sacred now from blasts and blights,

Lifts in a firm, untrembling hold

Her chalice of fulfilled delights.

Confirmed around her queenly lip

The smile late wavering, on she moves;

And seems through deepening tides to step

Of steadier joys and larger loves.

The little volume contains many passages such as these. We have space

to quote but one of the poems complete, to show the manner in which

Mr. De Vere unites the real, the symbolic, and the external, with the

spiritual. Like most of his poems, it is marked by artistic finish and

grace, and many of the lines have a natural beauty of unsought

alliteration and assonance.

When all the breathless woods aloof

Lie hushed in noontide's deep repose

The dove, sun-warmed on yonder roof,

With what a grave content she coos!

One note for her! Deep streams run smooth:

The ecstatic song of transience tells.

O, what a depth of loving truth

In thy divine contentment dwells!

All day with down-dropt lids I sat

In trance; the present scene foregone.

When Hesper rose, on Ararat,

Methought, not English hills, he shone.

Back to the Ark, the waters o'er,

The primal dove pursued her flight:

A branch of that blest tree she bore

Which feeds the Church with holy light.

I heard her rustling through the air

With sliding plume,--no sound beside,

Save the sea-sobbings everywhere,

And sighs of the subsiding tide.